When feeding sheets of a media from a printer, for example, such as a laser printer or an ink jet printer, the sheets are fed from the printer to a sheet support such as a hopper or a tray, for example, on which they are to be stacked. The velocity of the fed sheets is sufficient to require a stopping arrangement so that the sheets are stacked with their leading edges substantially vertically aligned.
A previous stopping arrangement used a bail in which its free end rested on the uppermost sheet of media in the stack of sheets. This bail relied upon friction created by the free end of the bail engaging the sheet exiting from the printer to stop the fed sheet.
However, the bail did not function satisfactorily with some sheets of media. For example, the sheet being fed to a sheet support such as a hopper, for example, sometimes engaged the uppermost sheet in the stack in the hopper and pushed it beyond its normal stacked position in which the sheets would have their leading edges substantially vertically aligned. This produced a stack of sheets with a very ragged appearance because some of the sheets were pushed beyond the normal stack position.
Additionally, some of the sheets were occasionally ejected from the stack. This resulted in collations being lost from the stack of the sheets of media. This also caused the ejected sheet to be damaged or soiled, and a user would consider ejection of a sheet to be a failure of the product.
While a fixed stop for engaging each of the fed sheets at its leading edge would enable substantial vertical alignment of the leading edges of the sheets in the stack, the fixed stop has disadvantages. One disadvantage is that it presents an obstacle to removing the stack of sheets of media from the hopper or other support for the stack of sheets. Another disadvantage is that a fixed stop is not aesthetically appealing.